IMDb #150 Review: Cool Hand Luke (1967)

Source: Wikipedia

A heroic troublemaker-without-a-cause saws the heads off parking meters, then goes to jail for it. Where he continues to make trouble without a cause.

Naturally, his cavalier attitude rankles the bosses.

He plays the part of the quiet, mysteries newbie on the chain gang. As an itinerant worker, the men dig ditches, tar roads, chop roadside weeds, and box barefisted on Saturdays. But our hero Luke makes it his side job to start shit.

He takes a beating in the ring, eats fifty eggs in an hour (and makes a killing off the betting pool), shouts out in a thunderstorm at a God he doesn't believe in, works crazy hard to finish tarring a road ahead of schedule, plans crazy escapes and actually goes through with it. Why? For the hell of it.

Sure, Luke's got a cool head, a belly swollen with guts, but he's got nothing in the world to fight for. Depressing, really, to watch all that potential squandered on petty mischief.

He's not totally alone. Luke's dear mama visits once -- ONCE -- then leaves and dies offscreen of disappointment. (Uh, spoiler, I guess. Did you care?)

In the event he finally escapes, Luke's charm and cunning and enormous reality-warping balls just deposit him back in the box. Out there he's got no money, no car, no house, no friends. Back he goes into solitary confinement, his life sentence and the sentence to summarize his life.

Why make such a concentrated effort to piss off the world? "Something to do," he says with a shrug. Stalling for time. Which the whole movie feels like. Sure, our boy Luke sticks it to the man. But what's that worth? One life time and phony religious conversion later, it's not worth a damn, just a smattering of tears and possibly a bullet right through his shit-eating grin.

126 minutes.